The
news of the collapse of Publishco would have spread through the streets
of Writer's Block like a proverbial wildfire had half of Flutonia not
heard the unfathomably loud implosion first hand anyway. Still,
since it was one of the most exciting things to ever happen, a
collective consensus to pretend no one knew about the event instantly
struck everyone who'd heard the implosion, like a crash of illiterate
thunder just after a bolt of lightning brainchildren."Did you hear about what happened at Writer's Block?" they would ask each other.
"Oh, no! Whatever happened?" the others would
follow, having just conversed all but verbatim a few blocks back with
another party of gossipers. The great news-tale of the Fall of
Publishco By an Unknown Entity would follow, all listening to the new
storyteller shining for a brief moment as a prised Pulitzer winner or
campfire tale teller giving the campers nightmares for longer than
they'd ever remember. Each would take their turn at holding the
torch in the story's re-hashing, which only got better each
re-telling. Then after what seemed like ages, the cliques of
gossipers would forget the whole thing to go share the news with anyone
else who hadn't heard it from them in a couple of hours. In each
telling (for the cause was unknown), the culprit got more and more
magnificent. First it was a baby microscopic fluton who'd briefly
pondered sneezing and accidentally fractured the skyscraper's loose
thought-metal structure. Then it was a clique of teen flutons
who'd told a dirty joke about the matter and simply forgotten how
powerful the Flutonic Effect was. Then it was a high school
award-winning science project that failed at its biggest presentation,
then an undergraduate Introduction to Flutonic Phylo of Flwoa Tragedy
mid-term paper. Then the number of culprits grew; from small numbers of flutons, to large numbers of flutons, to uncountable, then infinite, then imaginary, then nonexisent numbers
of flutons. Then, when flutons got exhausted, it became
everything
imaginable between flutons and the vifa solidity of matter sort-of
composed of indivisible flutonic particles way down on the flutonic
level. Then, the need for stretching out the gossip became as
massive as fathomably possible and gave rise to some of the
earliest ideas for
scientific particles. It was said the tragic antagonist was no
longer the
flutons, but a whole quark of flutons (however many there were). Then--didn't
you hear?--it was a whole neutronic fluton of quarks
of flutons, then
whole atom-things of neutrinos culprited by then with positivits
and
electrolytes that were already last sour's news. The atom-thins
became super-atoms became superatomicnanonomits, then molecules.
Then the molecules--in a sudden tiring of being a countable number of particles---broke into an infinite plethora of permutations of all of
the former, somewhere vifa far upward forming all thought and matter
and form and ideas and sentience.
On the tangible level--long after the initial fluton-error rumor but
nowhere near the tiring of the storytelling--a stray lit cigarette was
now blamed with the irony that the pile of ash was like its relative
microcosm metaphor of the ash tray's ash before it leaped into a much
bigger realm of metaphorical literary tangibility. Then it was a whole pack
of butts, then a pack of wolves, then a whole cigarette-factory inside
Publishco who made Wolf Lights, then there was a whole half of the
skyscraper packed with Wolf Heavys, then Wolf Extra Blacks,
then Killer
Mangling Mutant Werewolf Black Night-Light Plusses. Then on,
and on, and on; the sticks of
nicotine became sparklers, then glow sticks, then firecrackers, then
dynamite, then enough C4 to cause exactly the damage it did.
Soon half the building contained dangerous explosives placed by
Fight Club rebels angered by the corrupt tyranny of greedy tobacco
industries that
knew damn well their products cause lung cancer, forest fires,
complicate pregnancies, and the destruction of very important buildings
on Writer's Block. Soon, there came a time when exploding Publishco conspiracies reached their limit, and then massive
external conspiracies outside the building were created to replace
them. It was a Writer's Block Conspiracy, then a whole totway
conspiracy, then whole cities outside Writer's Square beyond
imagining, and finally no less than all of Flutonia was blamed save the
present company of those gossiping about the Great Fall of the Morality
of Everyone Else But Present Company Excepted And Doesn't It Just Suck
to Live In These Cynical Lonely Ethically Deprived Times
conspiracy. Then, and only then--when everyone realized the Great Evolution
of the Publishco Conspiracy conspiracy might have hit its limit coincidentally at the
climax of the Great Limitation Of Indefinitely Extendable Blame Gossip
Crisis--did one nameless person think to think up something beyond all
of Flutonia entirely. It was a great idea, for now infinitely
more beyond Flutonia could be blamed; whole massive great stories worth
taking years off from work to be told or heard could now be told.
This was the core foundation of everything that ever existed outside
Flutonia, and all because some idiot somewhere narrated the destruction
of an obscure publishing company somewhere between the dawn of Okuaka
and the middle of it. It was stupid, but marvelous. Life
beyond the only place anybody knows! What an adventure in
storytelling for everyone of all ages, as long as it lasted, which it
did for the entire 88-ish billennia of the only known universe anybody
ever knew about, named Okuaka by the nameless man who had now blown his
idea for existence to tedious astronomical levels. What a way to write.